In my practice, I work with many adolescents and teens on social communication. These days, that involves a lot of lessons around social media. Recently, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to offer two workshops on social media to a private day school in Toronto.
If you use the Social Thinking™ curriculum by Michelle Garcia Winner then you should know about Superflex™. Superflex is a superhero that teaches children how to defeat their team of Unthinkables™. Unthinkables are the characters that sometimes come into our heads and make us behave in unexpected ways.
A large part of my practice is working with preschool and school age children who stutter. When a young child comes to me, their parents are often looking for the stutter to be completely eliminated. Parents often have a lot of worry and anxiety for their child in the future. Will he lose his self confidence?
Nonverbal communication is one of my favourite areas of social communication. Watching the light bulb go off in my client’s heads when it clicks is so rewarding. After direct teaching of tone of voice, facial expression and body language, I always like to show clients how impactful nonverbal communication can be and how our communication is more than just what we say.
When you ask your clients how they feel, do they only ever reply with sad, mad, happy? I have found that a huge challenge when working I always provide parents with this article that helps adults to enhance children’s emotional vocabulary but lately, I have also been building a Book of Emotions. Here’s how I do this.
Have you ever asked a child about his or her day and were met with a blank stare and/or an “I don’t know?” Have you ever had a parent say to you, “I ask her what she did at school but she never tells me!” You are not alone!
Books, books, books. A speech-language pathologist’s life line. Without children’s literature, I don’t know how I would do my job! When working on social communication skills, I always search for books and stories on specific topics, as I find this to be an essential method for teaching these skills.
Studies have shown that children who stutter experience more emotional reactivity and have a harder time regulating their emotions compared to children who do not stutter.